Adoption & Fostering
Abstracts
Summer 2005 - Vol 29 (2)
Editorial: Roger Bullock
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The Adoption and Children Act 2002: a critical examination
Caroline Ball
Key words: adoption law, Adoption and Children Act 2002
The Adoption and Children Act 2002, due to come fully into force on 30 December 2005, effects a long-needed and radical reform of adoption law. The Act has had a very lengthy gestation and is widely regarded as being long overdue. After setting the reforms in a general historical and policy context, Caroline Ball examines, critically, the main provisions of the Act.
Caroline Ball is Reader (retired), Norwich Law School, University of East Anglia
A hidden population: understanding the needs of sexually abused and abusing children in substitute care
Sue Pollock and Elaine Farmer
Key words: sexual abuse, substitute care, adversities, assessment
Despite high levels of concern among professionals about how best to manage sexually abused children looked after in public care there has been little research on this subject. This article reports the findings from a study of a sample of such children that shows that as a group they share characteristics which make them significantly more vulnerable to sexual risks and to emotional, educational and behavioural difficulties than their non-sexually abused counterparts in residential and foster care. However, at the point of placement there are rarely markers to alert carers to the multiple deprivations and adversities in their backgrounds and it is therefore likely that this group of children will be denied the specific targeted therapeutic, educational and family support that they need. This study highlights the importance of good record-keeping, thorough assessments of need at the point of placement, effective communication between social workers and caregivers and joint planning between social services, health and education to implement comprehensive packages of care.
Sue Pollock is Lecturer in Social Work, School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol
Elaine Farmer is Professor of Social Work in the same department
Fostering children with sexualised behaviour
Key words: children with sexualised behaviour, foster care, support for foster carers
This article reports on an evaluation of the perceptions of foster carers attending a group for carers looking after children with sexualised behaviour. The group aimed to provide foster carers with much needed information, knowledge and understanding about the impact of sexual abuse on a child; how as foster carers they could develop strategies for dealing with challenging behaviour from the foster child; and how they could keep the child and other family members safe and cope with the demands of managing an extra-ordinary home for children who not only need safety but also emotional closeness. The paper documents the views of group participants and compares responses to the findings of research undertaken by others, especially Farmer and Pollock (1998). Additional evidence from literature that addresses the needs of foster carers and sexually abused foster children is drawn on to give a contextual background to the study.
Louise Hardwick is Senior Lecturer, Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work Studies, University of Liverpool
Identity issues for looked after children with no knowledge of their origins: implications for research and practice
Karen Winter and Olivia Cohen
Key words: identity, looked after children, adoption, searching
In the area of child care policy and practice, the benefits for children who are separated from their birth parents of maintaining some form of connection with their family of origin is now widely accepted. The arguments in support of this are found mainly in research concerning adoption and stem from four inter-related themes: children’s rights to know of their heritage and background, parents’ rights to information about the well-being of their children, the benefits of having knowledge about origins and concerns about the impact of not knowing. The effects on the developing identities of those who, for various reasons, are unlikely ever to have any knowledge of the details of their birth parent(s) is an under-researched issue. The authors use a case study to illustrate some of the gaps concerning knowledge in this area. They argue that there is much to be learnt from the development of research projects which have as their focus the accounts of children and young people, from a wide range of care arrangements, regarding identity issues where they have no connections with or knowledge about their birth parent(s).
Karen Winter is a guardian ad litem working for the Northern Ireland Guardian Ad Litem Agency
Olivia Cohen is a social worker working for a Fostering Team in Northern Ireland
‘I have no beginning and no end’: the experience of being a foundling
Audrey Mullender, Anita Pavlovic and Victoria Staples
Key words: abandonment, foundlings, NORCAP
The authors report on the second stage of a study of abandonment conducted at the University of Warwick in 2002-03. Interviews with ten adults who had been ‘foundlings’ revealed a wealth of thoughts and feelings that were often significantly different from those of other adopted people. Abandonment is harder to talk about and perhaps harder to come to terms with than adoption alone. The profound ignorance about identity, encompassing such fundamental details as original name, ethnicity and date of birth, also marks out foundlings as having particular issues to come to terms with. Nevertheless, those interviewed had grown out of being angry towards their birth mothers and wondered what they must have gone through to do something so desperate. Birth records counselling and attempts at tracing back to the earliest months of life were of limited use. NORCAP had been supportive to a number but, again, could not get past the lack of information. Much more could be done to help in policy and practice terms, notably by extending the Adoption Contact Register in specific ways that would help foundlings. Beyond this, decriminalising and facilitating abandonment are major social policy questions overdue for consideration in this country.
Audrey Mullender is Principal of Ruskin College, Oxford
Anita Pavlovic was co-director of the research and is now an advocate with survivors of abuse
Victoria Staples is a doctoral student and health and social care researcher
‘Family is family . . . it does affect everybody in the family’: black birth relatives and adoption support
Perlita Harris
Key words: black birth relatives, adoption support, user views, racism.
The voices of black birth relatives are rarely, if ever, heard in discussions on adoption support services. Drawing on findings from a larger study of service users’ views and experiences of such services, this article focuses on a small group of black birth relatives’ experiences of post-adoption support, highlights some of their specific support needs, as identified by themselves, and makes concrete suggestions for ensuring that services are appropriate, accessible and welcoming to them. The author seeks to demonstrate the importance of developing non-Eurocentric, non-stigmatising, culturally appropriate and anti-oppressive services that are tailored to meeting the specific needs of this group.
Perlita Harris is a lecturer in the School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol
Legal notes: England and Wales
Deborah Cullen
Legal notes: Scotland
Alexandra Plumtree
Legal notes: Northern Ireland
Kerry O’Halloran
Health notes: health inequalities for looked after children
John Brown, Chris Bonnett and Jan Welbury
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